Personalizing NGS Due to the relative ease of whole human genome sequencing, clinical researchers became interested in how they might use this technology to help their patients. There were, and still are, obstacles to overcome- but the promise is so great! The Ion Torrent technology came in a small box which could easily sit in [...]

The Human Genome Project was successful, but hard work. The major improvements to the technology were the increases in parallelization and automation. In 2003, just as the HGP completion papers were published in Nature and Science, ABI launched the‘3730XL’. It could run 24 96-well plates per day and generate around 2 MB of sequence. Some [...]

It all started with proteins The earliest methods for sequencing were developed for proteins. In 1950, Pehr Edman published a paper demonstrating a label-cleavage method for protein sequencing which was later termed “Edman degradation”. Around the same time Fred Sanger was developing his own labelling and separation method which led to the sequencing of insulin. [...]

Mentioning the abbreviation “GMO” yields one of two reactions: fascination with the biotechnology of creating food and other organisms that thrive despite pests or bad weather, or horror at the idea of creating an unknown, dangerous monster in the laboratory. Rothamsted Research, in Harpenden, England, was yet another biotechnology lab faced with the latter reaction [...]

The humble plasmid. We now know it so well, but as little as 60 years ago the field of extra-chromosomal heredity was decidedly murky. Not only was it the subject of great debate, conflict and friction within the scientific community, it was even used as a politico-religious tool during the Cold War! The origin of [...]

Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis is generally credited with inventing the polymerase chain reaction, but his discovery owes a lot to a microbiologist who loved to travel, some refuted assumptions of what can live in hot springs, and a now-closed field station in Yellowstone National Park. Here’s the story. In the 1960s, Thomas Brock was a [...]

There are a lot of places to read about the history of molecular biology, but one theme that generally seems to emerge is that discoveries are dependent upon the experimental technology. Take this list of Nobel prizes for molecular biology for instance.

While there’s a lot in “For the Love of Enzymes” to talk about, for this post I’m focusing on just one passing reference that Arthur Kornberg makes on NIH and the use of English as the language of science. In it, Kornberg is describing the factors that made NIH a huge success…

This is the story of how one of the most famous and quirky naming conventions in biology came into being.

The cell theory, or cell doctrine, states that all organisms are composed of similar units of organization, called cells. The concept was formally articulated in 1839 by Schleiden & Schwann and has remained as the foundation of modern biology. The idea predates other great paradigms of biology including Darwin’s theory of evolution (1859), Mendel’s laws [...]